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Nika never asks you to configure blind. nika doctor reads your machine — offline, presence-only — and prints the exact command that closes every gap it finds. 
nika doctor
Three honesty rules shape everything below:
  • Presence, never values. A key is reported set or unset — the value is never read into a variable, so it can never reach your terminal, a log, or a trace.
  • Offline by default. The base run touches nothing on the network. --ping (opt-in) TCP-probes your local ports only — never a vendor endpoint, and nothing is ever sent on the socket.
  • Diagnose-only. Doctor prints fixes, it never runs them. Your shell, your PATH, your configs stay untouched (nika wire is the explicit, idempotent mutator when you want one).

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A fresh machine, honestly

Captured verbatim against nika 0.97.0 on a machine with no keys, no configs, no editors wired — the worst case, and every line hands over: 
✔ 6 ok · 15 warn · 0 fail
✔ binary     v0.97.0 · self-contained (spec v1 embedded)
⚠ config     none — built-in defaults
✔ lsp        available via `nika lsp` (editor language server)
✔ mcp        available via `nika mcp` (8 read-only tools · nika_check through nika_tools)
âš  agent      cursor not wired
  fix: nika wire cursor
âš  agent      claude not wired
  fix: nika wire claude
✔ local      5 provider(s) (ollama · lmstudio · llamacpp · localai · vllm) — no key · needs a running server
  fix: nika doctor --ping   # probe the local ports (offline otherwise)
⚠ provider   mistral — MISTRAL_API_KEY unset
  fix: export MISTRAL_API_KEY=…
⚠ provider   anthropic — ANTHROPIC_API_KEY unset
  fix: export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=…
✔ image      mock ready · local → http://localhost:8080 default (set NIKA_IMAGE_LOCAL_URL to point elsewhere) · no cloud image key set
✔ tts        mock ready · local → http://localhost:8080 default (set NIKA_TTS_LOCAL_URL to point elsewhere) · no cloud speech key set
(Abridged — the full report lists every cloud provider the binary knows, each with its own fix: line. Warnings are advisory: with no workflow in hand, doctor cannot know which provider you need, so an unset key is never an error.) Read it in one pass:
RowWhat it tells you
binaryThe engine is self-contained — spec, schema, examples, templates all embedded. No install step is missing.
agentWhich editors/agent clients have MCP wiring to the real oracle. Every unwired row prints its own nika wire <client>.
localThe keyless, sovereign path — these providers need a running server, not an account.
providerCloud keys by presence (local-first ordering; set only the ones you’ll use).
image · ttsThe media planes — mock always works, so media workflows are testable with zero keys too.

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Probe the local ports

The local providers row says « needs a running server » — --ping answers whether one is actually there (loopback connect, 300 ms cap, nothing sent): 
$ nika doctor --ping
✔ ping       ollama — listening on 127.0.0.1:11434 (0ms)
⚠ ping       lmstudio — nothing listening on 127.0.0.1:1234
⚠ ping       llamacpp — nothing listening on 127.0.0.1:8080
⚠ ping       vllm — nothing listening on 127.0.0.1:8000
One local server up = a fully sovereign inference path: no key, no cloud, no account. That is the machine from the capture running local models with nothing else configured.

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For scripts and agents

Every fact above ships as JSON — agents and CI branch on summary.fail instead of parsing glyphs: 
nika doctor --json

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The fix that mutates, explicitly

Doctor never edits configs. When a row says fix: nika wire cursor, that command — and only that command — writes the MCP wiring, idempotently, preserving whatever other servers the config already carries: 
nika wire cursor     # or: claude · vscode · windsurf · codex · all

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Next

First workflow

Your first run needs none of the keys above — mock/echo is free and offline.

Local models

Turn the local row into a running, keyless inference path.

Editors

What the wired editor actually does (diagnostics · canvas · time-travel).

Agents

nika init briefs your agents; nika wire points them at the oracle.